Assange Understands That the Future of News Is in Transparency

Julian Assange has an Op-Ed out today in the Australian pointing out the absurdities of all that's going on. Here's a taste:

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

...

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

There's one paragraph, though, that demonstrates that Assange understands the future of news far, far better than most current establishment journalists:

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Despite Assange's claim, "scientific journalism" is not a new concept. As I've mentioned before, Kovach and Rosenstiel, in The Elements of Journalism, liken the original understanding of objectivity to the scientific method explicitly. In both, one should test hypotheses, then report the result. As a general matter in society, this is actually how we understand truth, so the fact that this analogy exists should be no surprise.

What makes Assange's claim different is that his "scientific journalism" is the transparency engendered by the internet. But aside from labeling it something else, this is exactly the thing everyone has in mind when they say "transparency is the new objectivity." Linking directly to your sources is the new best practice in journalism, and eventually eveyone will realize it. So while Assange is wrong that his idea is new, he's taken the "scientific" label from objectivity to transparency. I'd say overall, that means he gets it.